Lorain City Schools wants to absorb Lorain Digital Academy

LORAIN -- Lorain City Schools wants to absorb its sponsored community school, Lorain Digital Academy, as a means to save $640,000 annually.

The digital academy, an electronic school that teaches K-12 classes, receives funding through the district, but maintains its own school board.

"It won't make any difference to the students," Lorain Schools superintendent Tom Tucker said. "It'll be the same program, same people, same everything. It'll just be under Lorain City Schools."

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The change would not take place until next year if the Lorain school board decides to take that route, Tucker said.

Some positions could be cut if it is possible to merge them with existing ones in the main district, but Tucker said it is too early to say and that the decision is far from finalized.

The proposed absorption is still being worked on, but the district already factored the $640,000 a year in savings into the financial recovery plan submitted to the state this week.

"We're trying to get it under the same umbrella and use the same programs," Tucker said. The move would save money and at the same time expand the options for students in the main school district, Tucker said.

Students could have electronic classes available to them that likely could not exist if a teacher needed to be hired, he said.

The merger would also allow the school system to develop a seamless electronic platform for both the digital academy and the electronic elements in the other schools.

"No matter where a student is at, it is the same program, it would be consistent across the whole district," he said. "It would be more consistency and at the same time we can be saving money."

The Digital Academy accepts students from within and outside the district, Tucker said.

"For some students, it works better," he said. Enrollment has increased at the academy in the past year and Tucker said this could be attributed to the loss of high school busing. Between 100 and 200 students attend the electronic school, he said.

"For some, that was the only option they had," he said.

The Digital Academy has proved successful. While Lorain schools have struggled with debt, the academy ended last year with more than $660,000 left over. The district would not necessarily rake in the leftover money if it absorbs the academy, said Dale Weber, district treasurer.

"If we did absorb it, we stop incurring $640,000 a year in costs," Weber said. "The other part of the piece is that there is money in the bank account that belongs to somebody, but that would be a legal issue."

The academy's board would be dissolved and the academy would fall under the jurisdiction of Lorain's school board, Tucker said.

Digital academy board member David Arredondo said he sees the decision as nothing more than an accounting change.

"It is more of a paper procedural type of thing," he said. "I don't feel it would detract from the mission of the Digital Academy, I would feel confident that the academy would continue in the way it is succeeding."